Not Hell or Damnnation (But Satisfaction)
by Humbuggy
Summary: Curiosity killed the cat, and not hell or damnation can bring it back. That old saying, about cats and curiosity, has an unfortunate tendency of not applying to Derek's life in most day to day situations - except when it does. And, Derek muses as he wonders why the hell he can't hold back his curiosity about Stiles, it's really fucking him over. Derek/Stiles, Female!Stiles, Smut.


Trigger warnings: Post Season 3b Stiles issues [semi anxiety attack], and some dubious consent [sex while drunk, accidental voyeurism] otherwise nup.

This is 50% smut, but also mostly pining and Derek's complexes.

* * *

 _/Curiosity killed the cat, and not hell or damnation can bring it back./_

That old saying, about cats and curiosity, has an unfortunate tendency of not applying to Derek's life in most day to day situations - except when it does. And when it does, it really, really does. So of course, the moment that he's left alone in Stiles's room, is the moment that it has to come and bite him in the ass.

It smells like any other teen bedroom, looks like any other teen bedroom. It is, perhaps, slightly less feminine than any other teenage girl's room he'd ever been in. There are clothes lumped in corners, empty candy packets piled in a bin, the salt and fake-cheese of cheetos, the distinct sharp smell of female arousal, body products, Scott's own scent imbibed into the bed – noticeably without an accompanying smell of cum, Malia's scent, the residual chemical vanilla smell of a now dried up air freshener and of course, Stiles herself.

He sat on the bed, waiting for Stiles to return from the kitchen. _("Pizza Pockets wait for no woman, Derek," She'd told him firmly, swivelling up and out her desk chair. "Tell me what you need researched once I've eaten." )_ He's twiddling his thumbs and poking around her room, scanning her cluttered bookshelves and eyeing the beaming faces that stare down at him from photographs. Everyone from Melissa and the sheriff to Erica and Boyd are on there. Derek himself is not, but that's okay. He's running his fingers over the red string on the wall, strumming them idly, when something different catches both his eye and his nose.

There's a tin open on her bedside table. A faint smell of perfume, soft and floral, wafts up from it. Against himself, he's curious. Stiles doesn't wear floral perfume, if she does at all. He slides the metal tin lid all the way open and looks down at the contents, a deep furrow marking his brow. There's a long lock of dark brown hair, shiny and silken, tied with the sort of hairband kids in fifth grade use, green, the elastic has gone yellow with age. There's a paper pressed flower, an orchid with faded white and purple petals, a rose pink scrap of a French silk scarf surrounding a perfume bottle certainly too old to use, the perfume inside gone an off yellow-brown, and a torn out piece of a newspaper.

It's an obituary, he realises, with a swooping punch to his gut. He's just gone poking through a box containing Stiles's mother's things.

"It's kinda morbid, isn't it?" Stiles is leaning against her door frame, one hand holding a plate of pizza pockets, the other tucked into the pocket of her shorts.

Very determinedly, he puts the obituary down and doesn't look at her thighs. They are very white and have surprisingly few moles, just small ones dotted here and there like sparse constellations.

Stiles moves inside, sliding her plate onto the desk, and pulling the tin out of Derek's hands. She sweeps one thumb gently over the orchid and puts the lid back on. Derek doesn't say anything as she puts the tin back into her wardrobe, stretching up onto the tippy toes of her battered vans, to slide it onto the top shelf. Her red plaid shirt stretches with her, long sleeves rolled up her forearms.

When she turns again, Derek feels like he should apologise. For what, he's not too sure, but the sentiment must show itself on his face somehow because the hard look in her eyes softens somewhat.

"The hair's from when she shaved it off," Stiles says. "Mom didn't want to lose it slowly, couldn't bear the thought of finding clumps everywhere. I buzzed mine at the same time." Stile's runs a hand through her choppy locks and Derek remembers the short buzz that she'd previously kept it in. "Dad was going to throw it out, or burn it or something. But," Stiles shrugs, a quick lift and drop of her shoulders. "I couldn't bear the thought of letting it go, letting any of her go. It's morbid. I know. But then, you'd probably kill to have something of your mother."

He can't help his minute flinch at that, a twitch of his muscles, a flicker at the corner of his eyelashes.

She doesn't apologise, Derek notices. Stiles merely uncrosses her arms where they've been resting over her wonder woman tank top and moves to the computer, dropping the conversation entirely.

She leans over her desk, tapping the desktop keyboard to wake it up and her lack of conversation, so very unlike Stiles, throws him off balance.

"Why did you grow your hair out?" He asks suddenly, into the abrupt silence. Stiles looks at him in a considering fashion. Her gaze holds weight and Derek has the sudden sense that his question, and her answer, holds more meaning than just growing out hair.

"I felt it was time for a change," she said, her honey-brown eyes gazing evenly into his own. They hold that position for a long moment, a heavy undercurrent humming between them, until Stiles turns and sits on her chair, spinning it so she's resting her chest on the back, small breasts pressed flat against the fake leather. Her spine curves in invitation.

Derek does not hold his breath as he moves to lean behind her, but it is a near thing.

She leans back into him, wrapping one arm around the brace of his thigh, and her skin is so very warm.

Derek was beginning to realise that he had the worst luck, when it came to Stiles and her room.

/*/

He'd been running along the paths of the woods late at night, letting the light of a waxing moon filtering down through the canopy light his way. It was only a little way off midnight and he was close enough to Stiles's house that it was an easy enough detour. She wouldn't be asleep yet, Stiles never fell asleep before twelve, and he wanted to see her. Why he wanted to see her was question that Derek didn't think about, just let the stirring _something_ tug his body towards her house like his own gravity was ineffectual against its pull.

The ground was dewy under his feet as he made his way to her house. The Sheriff's cruiser was absent from the drive, and Stiles' blue jeep sat on the curb. Her curtains were pulled shut, and a yellow lamp glow snuck out from the gaps. It was easy enough to get to her room in the dark; a simple climb up the tree and then onto the lee of her roof where her window was. However, in the seconds it took to haul himself up into the tree's branches, Derek heard something that made him pause. Part way between a sob and a gasp, a hitched noise cracked against Derek's senses.

 _Was Stiles … crying?_

Caught between trying to find out what was wrong, and leaving the situation alone all together, the next noise made him edge onto the lee of her roof. It was moan, stifled and frustrated – even a little agonised.

 _Was she having a nightmare?_

It wasn't out of the bounds of possibility, despite the fact that the Nogitsune was behind her, she still dreamt badly sometimes. Creeping a little closer, he slides his fingers under the pane of the window, where it just propped open- barely a pinkie distance from the sill – as he went to wake her up.

There was a slightly muted smell in the air, distinct from the scent of damp green growth and cooling roof tiles but he ignored it in favour of beginning to slide the window open.

At that moment, where he sat crouched by the window, her curtains fluttered open for whatever reason. Perhaps the fan had moved them, or the loose tie holding the curtains closed had slipped. Regardless of this, Derek was now able to look inside, and when he did, he jerked back and was only able to stop himself tumbling back further than a flinch due to his tight grip on the windowsill. Red-hot embarrassment scorched his face, and a deep squirm of heat squirreled in knots near his abdomen.

Well, it certainly wasn't a nightmare, and she certainly wasn't crying.

Blood thrums in a heady rush around his face as he watches; drawn against himself to look at the tableau framed by lamp glow and lit by mussed blankets.

He catches it in snapshots first, between blinks and gaze that can't settle; the crook of her knee, skin running to pale thigh, the constant shuddering tremble, the quick fast movement of her left hand, her fingers catching on peaked nipples down to where they frantically moved against herself, the ecstatic curl of her toes, body in its aborted movements.

 _God- fu-uh! ck… fuck, fuuck._ Her voice hitches and catches on itself, panted out through bitten lips and from under close eyelids. Her eyelashes make perfect dark semicircles on her cheekbones.

Derek is muscle made stone. He's helpless to watch as she rubs herself off; her body rose, trembled, and fell again.

He has to move. He absolutely has to move.

" _Shi- ah, fuck."_ Stiles squirms and whines, tossing her body impatiently, her free hand running red furrows over her skin as she chases her orgasm. From here, the smell of her, of her arousal and the slick clean sweat of her skin, is strong through the slightly open window. There is a high running whine between her gasps and Derek is hooked unblinking, dry lips parted, as she locked up, moving her right hand relentlessly as she bit her fist and tossed her head to the side to look right at Derek's window.

The shock of it, that fear of discovery, was enough to startle Derek into action. He's off her roof and down the tree, running into the wood to home before she's even finished coming.

If he jerks himself off a little more desperately that night, no one would know. However, it took him a good time before he could look at Stiles without remembering the way her voice hitched and the frantic trembling of her naked body. The self-recrimination was expected, an old friend, as she wasn't old enough; she didn't know, she didn't consent. The guilt was an edged thing in his mouth, a blunt twisting whenever he remembered what he'd done and how he'd been unable to look away. That guilt, too, was his own.

He'd kept enough secrets before, and that he knew what she looked like during sex or the sharp smell of her as she came, was just another he kept to himself

/*/

There is going to be a day where Derek will not only regret poking into Stiles's life, but also actually stop doing it. You'd think that he'd learn, but hey, apparently not.

They're watching a sci-fi horror film, one of the terrible old ones with the bad CGI and tacky cheesy effects. Mason had dug it out of the depths of the internet; it was a bad attempt at genre melding a space station with a horror-slasher film and it was harder to say what was more laughable, the terrible space station effects or the shit acting. It's supposed to be a fun pack thing, with the old guard and their two new members, at Derek's loft. Lydia, Kira, and Stiles has spent ages hauling pillows, blankets and beanbags up from their cars in preparation and now there was more fabric on the floor than there was floor itself. Everyone had bought snacks too –Liam had even made brownies, the gooey deep pan kind that had disappeared before the movie even started.

Derek is more interested in the insults thrown at the screen and between his pack members than in the movie itself. He snarks back at them when they sass him, watching Liam's puppy bumbling and the way Mason inserts himself carefully into the conversation with the seniors. Lydia is sharp and pointed, Malia snapping insults and eating all their beef jerky, Scott and Kira laughing and teasing. Stiles is perched on a beanbag on the outer edge, much like Derek, but she's paying more attention to the movie than everyone else is.

At one point in the movie, towards the middle, Derek's attention starts drifting. The lunatic had the love interest trapped behind a flimsy sliding door. The love interest, a blonde with a terrible 80s hairdo paired with equally shit acting and some big breasts, was melodramatically sobbing as she leaned against the locked door. Derek watches detachedly and wonders if the director had ordered her to cry because he knew it made her breasts heave up and down and he liked the view.

"Let me in," The madman was gurgling, "let me in." In the background, Kira pointed out that they could see the wide gap where the bad latex prosthetic didn't cover the skin and Stiles's scent has gone sharp sour. Derek only noticed because he's been excessively attuned to her in the last couple of weeks, but her scent is sharp and sour, her heart jumpstarts too fast, and her lungs are constricted. Her eyes are dark. Her face pale. Her shoulders curved in to her chest like something is clawing at her rib cage and she isn't sure if it's trying to get out or trying to reach in.

" _Let me IN!"_ The movie rasps, and that is when Stiles pushes herself out of her beanbag and rushes outside onto Derek's balcony.

Frowning, he follows silent and unnoticed.

Outside, the dark night air tugs on his shoulders, the chill concrete curling his bare toes.

Stiles is leaning back against the wall, facing out to the starkly lit down-town as she shakes, panting her breaths and counting her fingers over and over again.

"Stiles?" He asks, her name one solid shade of concern, and kneels beside her.  
When his hands come to still her trembling fingers, the chill of them sends his breath rushing in a shock of cold.

"I'm okay," Stiles says, eyes dancing over fingers, hands, and the strong length of Derek's forearms. "I'm okay. I'm okay," She repeats.

He isn't sure if she's trying to convince him or herself or both of them, but either way, her eyes are a dark shadow like she's recalling something that makes her breath freeze and instinctive fear scream. Her protestations are glaringly unconvincing.

Her breath races like wild things and she smells of barely contained panic. She almost begins to hyperventilate, and Derek is galvanised into action.

"Hey, easy," Derek says running his hands up and down her arms, shoulders to fingertips. "Hey, hey, easy, easy."

He doesn't know where the words are coming from; some old childhood memory of soothing a frightened animal perhaps, or his Mom's grounding presence as she soothed his nightmares of Paige's death away. But all he can think of is stopping her shakes and stilling the skitter of her lungs, easing the shadows from her eyes and of needing to know what's wrong and how to stop it.

"Breathe," he orders and doesn't know quite how long he kneels there, shushing words and running his hands over her skin until Stiles calms down and her heart no long pounds in her veins, but it's long enough that his knees ache uncomfortably.

"Are you okay now?" he asks her after it's over, stares seriously into her eyes and reads carefully for the truth when she answers.

"Yeah," Stiles says. Her lips tremble but her heart beat remains steady as she answers. "I'm okay." Then, belatedly, "Thank you."

They kneel there together, breaths matching and mingling in the outside night silence. Inside the loft, Derek can hear Malia jump on someone – Mason- and tickle him relentlessly. The shrieks of laughter are almost pained.

Stiles licks her lips, and Derek follows the movement with his eyes, flicking them away quickly when he realises what he's doing.

"What was that about?" He asks finally, curious beyond his concern, the need to know an itch over his instincts.

"Beginning of an anxiety attack," Stiles avoids Derek's gaze, sliding shadowed eyes down to the left. Her eyelashes are dark against the curve of her cheek, like the night Derek stumbled across her in her bed, and he ignores the urge to run the pad of his thumb along it for the immediate now.

"Anxiety attack?"

Stiles nods, roughs out a dry swallow, "From the Nogitsune. I used to see him in my head, and uh, he kept demanding to be let in. He used to say it exactly like the movie. 'let me in'. You know? Just over and over. 'Let me in. Let me in." Her breath rushes in a harsh wave and Derek makes a shushing sound as he runs a hand down her arm again.

His stomach is a queasy squirm and he almost, almost but not quite, regrets asking.

"Sometimes," Stiles said unprompted to their circle of two, "I dream that he's back again because there was still a little bit left inside of me. That he actually never left at all, and everything that happened since then was just a hallucination and that this isn't real. That Allison died for nothing. And listening to that movie just – triggered it," she shrugs and stands unsteadily. Derek stands with her, but he doesn't drop his hands, no not yet. He doesn't want to lose the slowly growing heat under his skin, the warmth that means Stiles is okay.

"Like all the bad memories come at once," she says quietly to the silence.

Darkness flits over her eyes, and all Derek wants to do is smudge the shadows off her skin; drench her in sunlight until all the nightmares that squirm in her never return.

There is a long pause before Stiles shakes him off, a twitch or two of her shoulders, and Derek drops his hands accordingly despite his reluctance.

They walk quietly back into the warmth of the loft, Derek splitting off to the kitchen to come back with the sour candy that Stiles likes and the peanut butter popcorn Lydia loves but will continue to deny actually eating to the grave.

They've started another movie in the living room and it's totally different to the last one; its Pacific Rim – Charlie Hunman has just been picked off the Alaskan sea wall in a helicopter – and Derek settles in for two hours of giant robots fighting monsters. Having seen the movie once before, he watches the movie at the good parts but overwhelmingly, he watches Stiles as the mindless guaranteed victory and the soundtrack lighten her eyes and lift most of the weight off her shoulders. There are still shadows pressed to the corners of her mouth and the downturn of her lips when she thinks no one is watching.

The pale curve of the nape of her neck is inviting, and later that night when they all get up to go to their respective homes, Stiles lingers last and he thinks that crooked smile and curve of her cheek is a gift she's passing only for him.

"Thank you," she says, and Derek wishes that he'd learn to stay away.

/*/

Stressful intimidation-slash-negotiations are old hat by now, and yet, they never ever lose that prickling edge of danger and fear. So far, this particular round of negotiations is not going particularly well. No one has been hurt yet, but he's still wary, since Summer Fae are actually a thing and are creepy as fuck when they barter for land use.

The missive had come in the form of a piece of soft fibrous paper wrapped around a long bat's wing bone delivered by a single fae dressed in robes as gold as their skin. The resulting missive, a request for land use, has all of them worried. Derek himself, when he saw it, had girded himself for an argument that thankfully did not come to pass. Both Scott and Stiles are against it, which was one less thing for them to argue about with Derek, and the rest of the pack followed Scott's directives as he was 'Numbah 1 Tru Alpha 5Ever™ Stiles Stilinski' so there weren't any problems there either. Derek's glad for that, glad for their support if not their understanding that this was his heritage, Hale Pack Territory, his family's territory, his territory. The idea of letting Fae camp on it is unsettling, and it rankles unpleasantly when he thinks about it.

He isn't alone in that respect either; Scott's opposed because not only are Alpha instincts strong, but all the blood that they've shed to protect Beacon Hills, for Beacon Hill, makes him more than a little reluctant to let an unknown supernatural 'court' camp there, even temporarily. Pack have died here – people have died here - and a foreign presence who wants to swan in and muscle around their territory put all of their backs up – even the human members. Through, as Stiles put it, it was less about territory and more about territory PLUS the stories about the Fae court that did not indicate good things.

"No one wants crazy people going missing in the woods due to creepy fairy parties, and coming back 100 years later because time passes strangely in fairyland," she said, as she'd tapped her fingers compulsively on the kitchen island of Derek's loft earlier that week.

So now here they stood, the mid-morning sun filtering gently through the trees on the edge of the preserve. It is the closest to neutral ground Scott and Derek could find; away from the centre, but still close enough for backup if it all went to shit. Derek can hear the steady thrum of Stiles's heartbeat from where she stands on the other side of Scott. Sharp and loaded with anxiety, Stiles's scent prickles against his senses, but he doesn't need to smell it to know that she's nervous; the way her fingers tighten around the grip of her metal baseball bat is telling.

"Shouldn't they be here by now?" Scott asks quietly at a level that was mutter for anyone without a supernaturally boosted hearing.

"They said they would agree to meet midway between the dawn and the Zenith of the sun," Derek points out. "This was a rough estimate."

"Yeah bro," Stiles says with muted sarcasm, "everyone knows how to judge time by the sun. Clocks are so yesterday."

Well, if she was managing sarcastic retorts, then it couldn't be too bad, but then again…

At that movement a jangling chime of bells, the overpowering smell of cloying nectar and something sweetly rotting filled the clearing and all of them stiffen.

"Remember what Deaton said, don't give them your name or thank them," Stiles reminds them quickly and quietly.

"Be polite," Scott mutters out of the corner of his mouth, mostly directed at Stiles. "Don't insult them, whatever you do. They won't like that."

The trio of fae that step forward are tall and, like the fae with the paper missive, without gender. They are all unnaturally lithe and disquietingly beautiful in the perfect symmetry of their faces; Derek surveys them with a wary eye. Swathed in pale spider silk and silvery vines, they wear simple over-robes that drape loosely over their shoulders and down to the forest floor. Aside from the identical robes with their deep plunging necklines and loose clasps, the three fae look very different to one another. The tallest fae stands in the middle, their skin is a dark blue-black and their eyes are a verdant turquoise. An empty sword and knife sheathe hangs at their hip, flowers and ferns intertwine themselves in the long locs of their black hair. Tiny white lace flowers grow from their eyebrows and a dusky creep of moss spreads itself over the blush of their collarbones.

The second fae, who's opposite Derek, has a cheeky expression, their light brown eyes darting hither and thither under brows faintly dusted with pollen. This one has wispy short red hair, their choppy locks setting off the umber gold of their skin. Purple star shaped flowers of ithurial's spear and spidery mountain garland grow freely from their hair, the deep purple petals floating and shifting in the wind. Some of it's woven into a thick tall necklace and their hands drape with a lacing of spider webbing and columbine flowers. A bow and an empty quiver can just be seen poking out from behind their shoulder.

The last fae though, sends Derek's instincts prickling in warning. While the middle fae holds a neutral expression, and the second one of just restrained capricious mirth, the last seems impatient; a savage end of haughtiness just tucked under the jut of their chin and the thin press of their pale lips. This one has long gold hair, braided back in a tight sailors queue; bark layers itself over their arms and down the edge of their pale cheekbones. Sharp leaf spears and soft wood ferns mantle their shoulders. This one has two sword sheathes hanging on both hips, and two long knife sheathes on their back. This one, Derek knows, will be trouble if it comes to it, and for a movement he wishes Scott had not been so insistent on Stiles coming along. If it were up to Derek, he would replace Stiles with someone who could fight, and not just with a baseball bat.

As if sensing his thoughts, Stiles slides Derek a glance that was warning and a promise all at once. Her breath settles and her stance shifts into something a little more solid, more determined, and he turns his gaze away from her to settle again on the fae delegates.

"Pack Alpha," The lead fae says, inclining their head in respect, "I am titled Dadrain, chosen delegate of the Summer Court of North America."

Dadrain pronounces _North America_ as if it was a foreign word, stumbling a lilt around the syllables.

Scott inclines his head, being careful, Derek's pleased to notice, not to expose his neck. "Dadrain," Scott says, miraculously not butchering the pronunciation, "I understand you are here to negotiate for the use of my territory's land."

"Such is our purpose," Dadrain replies impassively.

Awkward silence reigns for a brief moment before Stiles speaks up.  
"If I may," She says, not looking at anyone but the three fae, "what is the purpose of your Court in this Territory?"

The third fae, the one with the bark on their skin, stiffens and their lips tighten with a brief fury, and Derek eyes them sharply. He can't smell anything other than moss, wood, nectar, and wild-flowers from the three fae, and their unnaturally steady heartbeats and breathing mean that a large part of his senses are rendered void. He know it's putting Scott on edge too- the undercurrent of emotion shivering along the pack bond.

"We shall keep court here, strengthen ties and hold our revels," Dadrain replies with perfect composure. "The treaty that we shall negotiate with you, Pack Leader McCall, shall eensure that there is no obtruding of our Court upon your Pack; provided, of course, that your Pack returns the same, and intrudes not on the doings of the Court."

"May we hear this proposed treaty?" Scott's voice holds every modicum of respect and politeness, but it is not a request and the fae know it.

Again the third fae stiffens angrily, leans forward and opens their mouth with a hot movement.  
"Sellion." It is a reprimand, a short verbal check, and Sellion – the third fae – shoots the red haired fae a glower, but subsides.

Again, there's a regal incline of Dadrain's head. "Of course. The treaty outlines that for the duration of our stay, from now until the sun after the summer solstice, the fae shall hold Court in the preserve of the Hale Territory, free to arrive and leave as we please. Alpha McCall and his pack shall not intrudes or impede upon the revelries of The Court. In return, the Court shall keep the members of Alpha McCall's pack safe from their revelries and shall not impede or intrude onto the doings of Alpha McCall's pack."

During the small speech, Derek's been watching Stiles from the corner of his eye. She'd been serious and intent, frowning over the words as she parsed them over in her mind before she'd stiffened as Dadrain spoke.

Scott is nodding thoughtfully over Dadrain's words, but Stiles now steps forward, bat hanging loose at her side and Derek shoots her a sharp glance. What hell is she thinking now?

"By what terms," Stiles began speaking, her words precise and even, "do you classify a member of Alpha McCall's pack? And when you say 'keep safe', what specifically would your court be doing that would potentially endanger a member of the pack? I would also like to know why your Queen has decided to hold Court here for the first time in a century; because, as you're well aware, the last time the fae court came to Beacon Hills was just before the end of the 1800's."

While her words are careful not to slight, the tightening of Dadrain's expression and the drop of humour from the second fae indicated that she's hit something they were trying to avoid discussing. However, Sellion's reaction has Derek tensing up.

"You dare, human!" Sellion hisses, leaning forward with the coiled intent of a posturing cobra, all spittle and show, but venomous for it.

If they thought to intimidate Stiles, Sellion was wrong, because even as the second fae cried out and Dadrain snapped a reprimand, Stiles struck back.

"Yes I dare," she retorts with righteous strength, standing with an authority that she must have had modelled by her father, "I am a member of Alpha McCall's Pack, his Brother in bond and daughter of Beacon Hills' Lawkeeper. If there is _any_ danger from you holding Court here, to the Pack or the citizens of Beacon Hills, I have a right know!"

"You insolent-!" And here was the coil of muscles reacting, the danger provoked and striking. Suddenly, from where there had been only empty sword sheathes, steel now materialised at Sellion's hips. A long silver blade shone in Sellion's hand as they issued an undulating warlike cry and lunged at Stiles, their savage angry eyes blurring dark at the corners.

Snarling in alarm, both Scott and Derek start forward, shifting as fast as they can. At the same time, Dadrain and the second fae yell cries, racing forward with twin expressions of panic.

It was not necessary because even as Sellion lunged forward, the silver sword a blur of movement, Stiles was moving as well. Her bat came up, smashing into the sword to parry it away before coming down in a backhand swing across Sellion's face. It connects with a crack of bone and a meaty sound, and Sellion goes stumbling backwards to the ground.

Immediately, Dadrain and the second fae grab hold of Sellion, Dadrain holding a sharp knife to Sellion's throat, and the second fae standing just behind them, drawing an arrow back on their bow just in case either Stiles, Derek, or Scott decide to attack.

Derek is at Stiles's side, still shifted defensively, as Scott faces the fae with a stony expression on his human features.

None make a move to attack, and after a moment, the second fae lower their bow as Dadrain thumps Sellion back on the ground and takes their knife away from Sellion's throat.

"My sincerest apologies, Alpha McCall," Dadrain says as they stand up, "on behalf of this _fool_. He shall be punished most thoroughly for breaking the peace of the negotiations."

Scott frowns even as he nods, "I appreciate the apology, but I believe that, in light of this fae's actions, I shall have to refuse Queen's entreaty to hold Court on my territory. I extend my greetings to your Court and hope that we are able to part on good faith."

Dadrain's face is tight with fury but it smooths out, equanimous, when they turn to Scott.

"Of course," Dadrain says "It is most understandable given the, unfortunate, preceding events. I shall pass your message onto the Court and you may trust that this shall not be held against you or your Pack."

"Appreciated," Scott replies.

Dadrain nods once, all emotion held in check as they lean down to haul Sellion upright. "I bid thee good summer. May your moon be bright and your sun warm." They inclined their head in a goodbye, before turning to go.

Derek watches the fae fade out from the trees and it is only until they were truly gone that he relaxes.

Scott is already by Stiles's side, looking her over intently. "You okay?" he asks, concern saturating his voice.

Stiles nods, "He didn't cut me or anything, don't worry about it." All the same, her eyes are dark and intense as she slips out from Scott's grasp. "I'm going to wash my bat off."

Her bat, Derek notices, is spotless.

"I'll see you at the jeep," Stiles is already just out of the clearing and moving with a surprising amount of swiftness. Quickly, Derek follows after and left Scott frowning at them both, alone in the clearing.

He finds Stiles at the creek, dipping her bat in the chill water and scrubbing it with her stripped off plaid shirt. Her black undershirt had the sleeves cut off, and he can see the bunching muscles of her biceps tense under her skin as she works furiously to clean the bat.

No crack of branches or rustle of leaves under his feet signal his presence, but all the same, Stiles seems to be aware of him as she stands and whirls in one movement, holding the bat up offensively, a fierce look on her face. It takes her a moment to truly see Derek and lower the bat, and she sags when she does.

"Oh. It's just you. Thought it was the fae or something, come to exact the revenge of their court," there is an ill line of humour in her face, even as she wavers the 'O' of the court in a pseudo spooky manner.

Derek doesn't answer her, but instead leans against a tree, crosses his arms across his chest, and observes her for a long moment.

"I'm okay," she says quietly, and Derek huffs out a quiet sound of disbelief, allowing his eyebrows to quirk in a show of emotion. Sighing, Stiles kneels down and begins cleaning her bat again. "Is it that obvious huh?"

"Yes," He says, before shifting his weight, feeling compelled to elaborate, "there's not much use trying to hide when you're upset Stiles. I know anyway; chemo signals can't be hidden."

"Allow me the illusion of emotional privacy, Derek," she snaps, "You don't get to ask me about it because your werewolf senses are tingling or something. You know I'm not okay. I get it. You don't have to run after me to tell me so."  
Her words are falsely bright, and there is a sharp needling edge to them that makes Derek grit his teeth and clench his jaw.

"I ask because I care, Stiles."

There is silence for a long moment as Stiles meets his gaze, and then slithers away from it, looking uncomfortable. She dips her head again, continues scrubbing at the bat and the metal of it shines with water.

There is a long silence and then-

"How do you know that I'm me?" She says abruptly.

Derek blinks, off balanced by this sudden change of conversation and wary as to where Stiles is taking this new train of thought. "Sorry? What?"

"How do you know that I'm me? And not just some kind of remnant of – whatever," she waves her hands around, seemingly impatient and determined all at once. "How do you know?"

"Why do you ask?"

"What I just did – with the fae. How do you know that was me, my personality, my everything that did that. How do you know that wasn't -"

"Something like the Nogitsune?" He finishes and she nods tightly, jaw clenched and eyes sharp.

Sighing, he shifts his weight, listening to the silent-alive sounds of the preserve. Deer moved carefully in the distance and the birds rustled in the branches of the trees. Finally, he says, "I don't."

"Oh."

Silence. Then, "But I trust that it's you."

"But what I did -" She broke off, biting her lips, her eyes dark.

Driven by the shadow crossing her eyes, the way her fingers trembled-firmed-trembled around the handle of her bat and the thump-tick of her heart as if it had turned over in her chest like the throaty choke of the Jeep's engine, Derek crouches down beside her.

He met her gaze, making sure that she didn't look away. "Stiles, what you did back there… it's not a bad thing. Being able to defend yourself, picking apart other people's arguments, seeing loopholes in things – those are things you've done, things you're capable off, probably even before I knew you."

"My dad always did say I was a born pragmatist," Stiles admits quietly and Derek nods in response.

"That person – that's you, it's all you. You have to trust that. And quite frankly, if that's what it takes, I'd rather that you hit the fae in the head than be sliced open."

Stiles quirks a smile at him and he clasps a hand over her shoulder. Her pulse flutters somewhere near his fingers, and he snatches an almost guilty pleasure of the warmth of her skin under his palm.

"Promise me one thing," Stiles says quietly after a moment, "If I'm ever not myself again- if I'm ever not… _right…_ and you think I'm going to hurt the pack, or anyone, you lock me up and you kill me."

Derek clenches his jaw almost involuntarily. "It's never going to come to that."

"Promise me Derek," Stiles is suddenly fierce and urgent, glaring at him. "Scott would never, but I know that you would. So you promise me Derek Hale. Because I trust you. _Promise me._ "

Staring just as intently back at her, Derek says, "It will _never_ come to that Stiles. But I promise you."

"Good. Thank you." Stiles leans back looking satisfied. With a sickening lurch, Derek realises that she's reassured by the awful intent of that promise, and he make the resolution that it's a promise that he will never have to collect on.

Huffing out a breath, Stiles stands and nods to herself. "Come on," She says, "Scott's waiting."

Derek follows behind her, pointedly trying not to notice the way his eyes linger on the slim lines of her neck, the surprising muscle that her thin shirt clung to, the lines of tendons and the firm hands that gripped onto her bat and the wet bunch of her plaid shirt.

"You coming?" She asks, glancing back over her shoulder. Her smile tucks the corners of her lips up into the curve of her cheek.

It's at that point that Derek realises that he's in too deep.

 _God damn it all._

/*/

Stiles games, it's not that uncommon for her to rock up on Saturday morning to pack shenanigans and down two coffee's moaning about her two hours of sleep 'and did they really have to do this at 8am? I was killing dragons until five last night'. She games more than she reads for pleasure – something Derek chalks down to her limited attention span and ADHD. Finding her in the public library hunched down in the fiction section and running her hands over the spines of the books as if she's searching for something is a little unusual.

"Stiles?" He asks,

And she jumps, full on, literally _jumps_. "Fucking hell!"

He can't contain the look of amusement that quirks over his face, smug self-satisfaction that emotes entirely out of the corner of his lips, his eyebrows and the glint in his eye. He didn't know when Stiles got so good at reading his emotions, but she did, and now she scowls up at him.

"Screw you Derek," she says, as she clambers up off the floor, "I thought we trained you out of being a creepy sneaker, you dick."

Crossing his arms across his chest, vanity allowing the knowledge that it made his henley cling around his biceps, he cocks his head down at her. "So you actually read."

"I read!" Stiles protests, "I read all the time. I am _queen_ of reading."

"Uhuh."

"I'm finding books for Malia. The school library doesn't have any more decent books that she hasn't read, and I promised I'd help her out. It's part of thing she has to do for summer school."

There's a mixed look on her face, brazen and embarrassed all at once and it's that look which prompts him to say, "You've been helping her a lot."

Shrugging, a bit pink in the cheeks, Stiles says, "Yeah. I feel kinda responsible. Like, I would've dated her in an instant, but she doesn't swing that way. Unfortunately for me, perpetually lonely once again," she laughs a bit sheepishly, "but she's cool and a friend, so yeah."

 _Oh. She likes Malia. Well that's… well. Right. Malia. Okay. okay._ Derek looks down at his arms, suddenly feeling the world recalibrating around him.

There must be a look on his face, because Stiles has kept on rambling and he catches the end of her rant

"- I honestly thought accepting the fact that I was bi would open up the dating pool more, but apparently not even though I've got the butch lesbian look down pat - but Lula and her girls bring me to Drag night at The Jungle, so yay for more of a social life I guess?"

It's at that point Stiles must realise that she's been running her mouth, because a red flush of embarrassment takes over her face and she shuts her mouth. She's nervous now for some reason, her pulse thrumming as she compulsively licks her lips and twitches her fingers.

"You're not going to turn suddenly homophobic are you?" She asks, the joke in her voice not quite sustained and it's at that point that Derek realises he hasn't said anything for a good minute and a half.

"What? No. I – no," he shakes his head as he has a strange and sudden desperate urge to find some way to bail out of this conversation. He only knows that leaving now will make his words a lie, that exiting the conversation to mooch about the woods for a while will seriously upset her, so he stays and still feels as if he's making a huge mistake.

 _Derek Hale, werewolf and professional fuck up,_ narrates the cynical voice inside his head.

Eventually he finds his voice and what comes out is, "So would you really date Malia?"

Stiles shrugs again, mood now shifted back from nervousness to bashfull-brazen-embarrassment as she sticks one hand in her hoodie pocket and runs the other through her dark hair. It's just long enough for her to run it through her long fingers and grip, long enough for him to run his hands through - to tug at the strands and pull her mouth to his, his hands on her and her hands on him. He can't help but remember those same fingers running over her body the night that he caught her masturbating, and the slither of guilt that follows the thought is enough to jerk him into listening to Stiles's answer.

"Well, it's not like I've got a crush or anything. She's cool, it could've been cool if it possible, I mean it's all hypothetical, but yeah I would have dated her."

 _Would have;_ doesn't necessarily mean that she still likes Malia now. _Would have._

He's not quite prepared for the relief that follows that statement, a gratefulness he doesn't question as it flows under his skin and lets his lungs loosen. Stiles looks curiously at him, something bright and sharply intelligent glinting in her eyes.

"Any reason you ask, or just cousinly concern?"

Here he should answer, and he goes to, it's just somehow he's had a complete brain reboot and nothing's working properly so all he manages to get out of his mouth is, "Hatchet?"

 _Fucking Hatchet. She just comes out to you, admits she'd date your cousin, and you turn to book recommendations?_

Stiles's mouth has just dropped open a little in her confusion, it's a look that should be unflattering, and it is kind of, but it also shows off the plush curve of her lips and he averts his eyes desperately.

"For Malia," he says, trying, willing himself to not show just how much he's fucking this shit up, "it's a book about survival – she might enjoy it."

"Oh." Stiles looks a little dazed, but she seems to jerk herself out of it, "Cool. Thanks dude, I'll put it on the list." She grins up at him, perked up now, and he really can't handle her mood whiplash and he really needs to get out of the conversation because he can't handle this anymore. So the moment she looks down at the pile of books in her arms, ridiculously long eyelashes caressing her cheekbones _again_ , he's about to turn on his heel and move away with all the stealth and speed he possesses. And he is, all muscles tensed, but then Stiles looks at him hesitantly. There's something a little vulnerable, a little hopeful, in her eyes. Her pulse skips nervously and he stays.

"Hey, Derek, do you want to grab a coffee with me? If you want, I mean. Only if you're not busy." There's an a fledgling overture in her eyes, and he hesitates.

"Would have. Would you still?"

God, he's probably giving _her_ whiplash with his weird logic jumps on conversation points.

He really should just stop asking questions. It would make his life so much easier, but he can't go back, and so he stays, watching her watch him watch her.

She cocks her head at him, a quirk of movement and her pulse flutters nervously – her scent turned tentatively hopeful. "Now? No. There's someone else now." She looks at him when she says it, direct, even, truthful. Adrenaline threads through her scent and her pulse dances nervously, like a hummingbird hearted thing, but otherwise she is perfectly steady.

He feels a tentative smile edge its way onto his own face as he says, "Okay. Coffee. I'd like that."

He follows her to the coffee shop, listening to her chatter, and watching her delighted smile when he says something particularly funny or ironic. She buys her own, and he does not offer.

He should stop asking questions, should just stop poking. But if he hasn't learned that by now, it's unlikely he's ever going to.

/*/

The night heat of summer is a sticky caress on the back of Derek's neck, and the air seemed swamped with the night blooming flowers that appeared to have just grown out of thin air during spring. Laden with the perfume of Jasmine and the purple flowers of Yesterday-today-tomorrow, the heavy breeze curls over his body in a parody embrace as he runs the dusk streets of suburban Beacon Hills. There's an itch under his skin that he isn't quite sure of, didn't know what it was or what it meant – he didn't even know how to get rid of it. He'd run the forest trails in full wolf form, but it hadn't settled him, and in the end he shifted. Jogging past fences laden with vines and purple blooms, flowers he recognised only due to Stiles's new habit of picking them to stick behind her ears so that their vanillin scent hung heavy in the strands of her short hair, he eventually comes up to Stiles's street. Her house is lit only in one window, her bedroom, and her jeep is the only car in the drive. A faint pounding music sounds from her bedroom and he pauses as Stiles appears in her window.

She's tugging a black shirt on, a loose tank with a deep cleavage shadowing her small breasts. When she turns, his breath catches; the tank exposes the deep groove of her spine, the back of it fell just under the small of her back in a loose gather of fabric. Her pale skin is a smooth uninterrupted fall and his fingers itch to follow it. She seems excited, bouncing about the room enthusiastically in time to beat of the music and he wonders where she was going. She disappears from view and, feeling like a total creeper, Derek turns to go. Except then her front door flung open and Stiles spills out her house with loose limbs and a flushed smile, humming the melody to the beat song as she did. Too late to leave, Stiles saw him and she smiles with open warmth.

"Hey sourwolf!" She says, tripping over to him. There's florescent paint on her shorts and skin, paint dipping down her collarbone in bold stripes of broad colour. "How's my friendly neighbourhood were-creeper?"

"Stiles," He nods at her just once and turns to go, feeling stupid and little mocked. It's a stupid and petty pinch of emotion but he can't help feeling it. The touch of whisky on her breath only makes it worse.

"Hey, don't be like that," She frowns at him, stopping him with a hand on his arm, "is something wrong?" she asks, serious now; worry dipping her eyebrows to a tight furrow. "Is something happening?"

All of a sudden, she's tense and wary and it's a relief that he can shake his head and not lie about it. "No, I was in the area jogging."

She sags in relief, and smiles again, whiplash mood like a yoyo. "Good. Because I'm seriously looking forward to tonight, and you, buddy, were harshing my buzz." She laughs as she makes her way over to her neighbour's fence, picking off thick bundling strands of flowering vine. Heavy bunches of tiny purple flowers spilled their sweet vanilla scent over her hands as she tucks them into her hair, securing them with bobby pins.

Some bunches fall to the ground, and he picks them up for her, sliding them up into her hair to lace a crown. His fingers are gentle as he slides in the bobby pins to keep it all in place, and the strands of her hair are soft and slightly tacky from the styling clay she uses. Hair falls through his fingers and he can't help the dip of his hand to the nape of her neck, short soft strands and softer skin warm under his fingers. She looks a little sucker-punched when he steps back, a blush of heat mantling her cheekbones, lips parted gently, mouth lax.

She's beautiful.

A garage door opens across the road and the moment is broken. Derek steps back, immediately aware that he is intruding on her space.

"Party tonight?" He says, tucking his hands into his pockets and looking down at her.

Stiles blinks up at him, the stunned look on her face covered over by the flash of – something? Self-awareness perhaps? – he doesn't know even as he turns to scent to try and figure it out. It's not much help either, she smell of nerves and lust, flowers, toothpaste, and paint.

"Yeah," She says, reaching her hand up to rub at her collarbones and then dropping when she remembers the paint on them. "There's a black light glitter rave at a club that doesn't look too hard at minors."

He nods, distracted, at her, thinking of her long limbs flung about on crowded dancefloors, and the natural sinuous movements of her body twining in intoxicated abandon. What would she be like, he wonders for a moment. What would her throat look like as she drinks, neck a long column of pale skin thrown back, throat working? The pure clear-bolt of lust that hits him at the thought is unexpected and stronger for it. His breath hitches in response, a hissing intake of air that has Stiles looking at him sharply. A glimmer of mirth, almost a dare, twinkles in her expression as she eyes him.

"You want to come?" She asks, open invitation written into her body. There's something slightly provoking in her voice; a 'na nah na nhye nhye' daring taunt that sets up the risk-taker in him for whatever mischief she has planned.

It's bait. Of course it's bait, and he takes it, just to wipe the expression off her face. If anyone else asked it would be because he doesn't want her alone at a rave if anything goes wrong – or god forbid, some lowlife spikes her drink. However, in that moment, it was simply because she dared him, and he wants to take it.

"Yeah. Okay."

The shock that flickers over her face is quickly replaced by something else, a blend of eager mirth – excitement prickling into her scent as she grins slow and sly up at him.

"Well then," She says, and her smile is the best kind of danger. "Come on up Mr Hale and I'll get you sorted out."

Feeling like he's just volunteered for something without knowing what it really is, Derek follows her up into her room, watching the long line of her back sway as she swaggers up the stairs.

Here, she gets him to pull his shirt off, manhandling him until she's painting straight onto his skin, starting from his back, at the very centre of his triskele tattoo. From the middle of it, she spirals green uv-paint off its coils, not keeping to the bold geometric bands she'd painted on herself, but instead coiling it into sinuous vines which wrapped over his shoulders. One coiling vine trailed to an end in the small of his back with another line of green branching off it and twining around his waist to his stomach. It's strangely erotic, just her and him and the low pumping bass of her music as she scrutinised his body, dragging the paintbrush along it and leaving vines in its wake. He turns slowly when she prods him gently, and he watches her as she paints trailing green over his chest, branching vines off his collarbones and over his pectoral muscles, coiling them up over his stomach and the rippling centre line of his muscles there. At one point her knuckles brush over his nipples, electric sensation firing through his body, and his intake of breath is like a gunshot in the room. His eyes are dark when they meet hers, pupils swallowing the ring of his irises.

Her cursing exhale, more of a breath than a word, the 'Fu' of 'fuck' trailing off into air, is her response; the ghost of her breath sends Goosebumps rippling along his skin.

Her lips are dry, and she licks them compulsively. All thought in absentia to their charged tension. Derek pulls a hand to her face, cups the broad length of his hand along her jaw, rubs the pad of thumb over her bottom lip. She half kisses it as she breathes. The room is thick with the smell of arousal, he's half hard where he stands, jeans doing fuck all to hide it.

He husks out her name, the word a solid rasp of _want_ , and she breathes out a tremor of air, swallowing noisily.

"Glitter," She says shakily. "We need glitter." She steps back, picks up a pot of bright fluorescent pink glitter, shaking it even as she takes another shot right out of a whisky bottle. The music changes from a dubstep song he doesn't know to something fast with a beat he's heard on the radio and Stiles bounces energetically to it, humming the melody and nodding her head the rhythm of the bass line. There's an odd relief to her movements, and Derek lets the heavy tension of the moments just before drop like Stiles seems to want to do.

"I like this song," Stiles says, unscrewing the glitter lid and surveying his body with an artist's eye. There's a slightly evil curl to the corner of her lips, but she winks at him in reassurance as she rolls the pot thoughtfully between her fingers. He would protest, but her fingers are in the pot, and then trailing along the lines of green paint on his body, leaving a sparkling trail wherever they go.

"Biceps," Stiles hums to herself thoughtfully, as he stands unresisting and quiet. "Definitely biceps."

She covers his shoulders and his biceps in thick dustings, smearing broad strokes of fluoro pink glitter on the panes of his cheeks and trailing down the tendons of his neck, before dusting the hollow of his throat. She's deep into his space as she finishes up, toes touching his and skin so close he can feel the warmth of her. All he needs to do is bend his head a little to brush his lips along her cheekbones. All he needs to do is lean down a little to join his lips to her. He brushes one hand down her wrist and takes the glitter pot from her, revelling in the hitch of her breath and the flutter of her pulse at her throat.

It's him who plays the artist this time, sweeping glitter on her throat and over the paint on her collarbones. He thumbs it over her brows, enjoying the warmth of her skin under his fingers, pressing a little firmer than necessary simply to feel it, pliant and giving, beneath his fingertips. Dusting it in her hair, he ignores her grimace and shoots her a shit-eating grin. Reaching one arm around her, he runs glitter down the nape of her neck in a single slow slide, feeling the hitches in her breath and her pulse. Burning with heat, his skin blooms with deep fire where it touches hers.  
Unable to resist, he follows the long line of her spine, waterfalling dusty colour down her skin in a treasure trail to the small of her back. When he steps back, she sways towards him involuntarily, lips parted, pupils blown.

"Christ," Her voice is shaded with desire when she speaks, roughing out a husky laughing huff of air. "Perhaps we should just forget the rave."

"No," Derek shakes his head, "I haven't gotten covered in glitter for nothing. Come on."

He takes great pleasure in the scowl she gives him, to an almost perverse extent, and then even greater pleasure in her laughter.

"You asshole. Alright," There's barely a shadow of rancour in her voice as she bounces in place, turns her music off and grabs her stuff, sticking the bottle of whisky under her arm as she does so. "You're driving my jeep though, there and back, dude. I've been drinking – and I don't want to crash."

It's a high mark of her estimation – she allows almost no-one to drive her jeep – and the implicit trust warms him.

He picks up his shirt and stuffs it in his back pocket at Stiles's warning about not ruining her work.

"Keys?" he asks, and they're off.

Stiles is well past the bounds of tipsy by the time they reach the club, a bloom of heat high on her cheeks and spilling her limbs around in the confined space of the jeep. He can feel the bass from outside the club already, and he's already wincing at the thought of the noise against his eardrums. A small plastic bag slides into his hand and he looks down automatically at it. It's a packet of noise cancelling earplugs, unobtrusively coloured and made of dense malleable foam. Shooting her a grateful look, he slides them in the pocket of his black jeans and follows her into the club past the bouncer who gives them a customary once over before waving them in. Stiles grins up at him and bounces on her toes, already moving to the beat. If he could feel it, he'd bet that her heart was already pulsing to the bass. She tugged him down to the darkened basement of the club, her hand tight around his wrist.

The music hits them like a wall the moment they step inside, and Derek takes the opportunity to utilise those earplug immediately. The noise dims to something that still pulses like a wild thing, crashing against his senses and beating itself into his body, but it's manageable now, and he works on tuning everything out.

The air reeks of sweat, alcohol, and lust, and it's only instinct that makes him turn to Stiles's scent – close and familiar – to ground himself.

He looks over at Stiles, her body swaying and uv light dusting her in a radioactive glow. The broad stripes on her chest, arms, thighs and ankles bracket her body in rings of glowing colour. Pink glitter glows on her body and in her hair like bright moon-dust, glimmering enticingly when the bass drops and the strobe kicks in. Even the flowers she's wearing glow slightly, the white edging of each individual petal a subtle black-light blue.

"Drinks, then dancing!" Stiles yells at him, making her way to the crowded bar and ordering four shots, passing two of them to him even though she knows full well that werewolves can't get drunk. Raising them to him in a parody cheers, she downs hers in quick succession, one after the other. Stiles tips her head back as she drinks them and Derek watches the long column of her throat glowing with pink glitter. It's exactly as, if not more perfect, than what he'd imagined. Throwing his own head back to take his shots, the image of her lingers behind his closed eyelids and the alcohol burns a line down his throat after he swallows. Whooping with exuberance, Stiles grins up at him, all young movement and gazelle like muscle. Excitement glitters in her eyes and she tries to tug him onto the heaving dancefloor.

Oh hell no. Content to simply watch, he rejects all her efforts to get him to dance with her as he finds himself a convenient spot of empty wall and staunchly refuses to move. She pouts up at him, disappointment making a moue of her lips.

"Go dance!" He said, raising his voice over the music and he can see the decision firm in her shoulders even as something tricky glints at the edge of her lips and in the corners of eyes.

"Fine!" She flips her hands up at him, capricious as usual and flings herself onto the wave of the music. He's not lying when he says that he wants to see her dance – he's never seen it, not really - but he's seen her clean her house and dancing as she does so. So he's more than a little eager to see her move, to see her _really move_.

Stiles, as it turns out is a terrible dancer.

Like, truly bad.

She flings herself about with an ungainliness he hasn't seen in months, doing a bad impression of the sprinkler even as her knees Charleston and the rest of her tries to belly dance. Second-hand embarrassment crawls up his spine and he's this close to trying to retreat into the walls even though no one knows that he's here with the ungainly chick attempting to create an awkward dance circle all on her lonesome. It's only until he locks eyes with her that he realises that she's doing this on _purpose._

"Save me Derek!" She mouths at him, pulling off some terrible dad inspired moves. The infamed belt-grab-and-shimmy makes it's way into there and her hands do some committed invisible maraca shaking. "You are my only hope!"

And trust her to throw some Star Wars references in there.

He shakes his head at her, he can't – no way – but then she does something with her body. A sinuous body roll flashing through the terrible dad act, she drops to the beat, hips twisting. Glitter flashes on the length of her spine as she turns and the look she sends him is unadulterated sex.

He shakes his head again at her, even though his mouth is suddenly dry and his palms are prickling with sweat, and she sighs, and gives up truly this time – lets herself be born away on the tides of the bass and rolling mass of moving bodies. She's everything he thought she'd be, dad dancing dropped completely. She's in her own world and yet part of the crowd, one of them and yet not. Heavy bass vibrates through his body and hers; her head is thrown back in ecstasy, as if she was recalling something deep and ancient. Thudding beats recalled old tribal rituals where the voices of gods would speak in trances and the will of the cosmos would rise under the skin. It is so obvious that people want her; covetous hands of strangers dragging over territory that is not theirs. She doesn't welcome them, not exactly, the sight of their hands on her hips and skin is enough to arouse his ire. The possessive instinct that shoots through him is sudden and galvanising.

He's moving before he knows it, rolling through the seething mass of ravers – the crowd parts before him, and closes behind him – as if he is the Moses to their red sea. Their bodies brush against him, some in accident and others in invitation, but he ignores them all. Stiles is his only focus.

He twines in around her body, pulling her close to him; her manner is a hundred percent triumphant as she drops against him and pulls him into her gravity. She is one completely flexible line against him, her skin is a hot brand against his own bare chest, her breasts brushing against him in electric tension and for a moment, he wonders what they look like to outsiders. Paint glows on the heat-slick of their skin; his with green vines glowing bright and verdant from his tattoo, pink moon-glow dusting his biceps and his face, her with her glowing bands and glitter waterfalling down her spine. They must be a beautiful sight, and the possessive thing inside him thinks, _good. let them watch_.

It's been years since he was last at a rave and actually danced, but the body remembers and the infectious beat is easy to fall into.

Stiles is drunk and brave with it, her pulse thrums against him and her hands are greedy on his skin, pulling him close and tight against her. Her hands are roaming freely, one arm around his neck and the other moving as it wonts – sometimes panning down the muscles of his back, cupping his waist, gripping his arms, or even just moving freely in the air as if her hands are trying to grab the bass in her fingers. At one point, she gets bold enough to dip down, gripping firmly at his ass and pulling him closer to her. His hips are tight to hers, moving against each other in strange foreplay as they dance; he's got one hand cupped around the curve of her ass, encouraging her closer, and the other can't stay still. Like Stiles's hands, his roams, but with less abandon and more intent. The feel of her beneath his spread fingers is infectious, her skin dewy with sweat, glitter, and paint, and he wants more.

He wants to touch her and never stop. If he could, he'd die like this; touching her skin, holding her as she rolls her body in an ecstasy of movement. He wants to see her fall apart beneath him, above him, around him. He wants everything from her. He wants to give her all of himself. The intensity of emotion would scare him, except he's lost to this moment; lost to the music, the bass, and her body.

Her eyes are dark, lips so close he can almost feel them. Can she feel that he's half hard against her? He doesn't know, he doesn't care and by the looks of it – the way she presses closer to him – she doesn't care either. Lust pours off her skin like perfumed oil, thick against his senses, and he buries his head in her neck. Shuddering as he mouths along her neck, pressing kisses into the salt of her skin, Stiles lets out a little sound of cut off air and presses impossibly closer. There's no room between their bodies now, even as he hitches her leg up to his waist, keeping her steady against the dancers and the music that surrounds them.

At some point – between the throbbing beat, and the bass that vibrates through their bodies - they pause, find a moment of stillness within the chaos just to feel the tension between them. He pulls back, takes a breath of air and then lunges forward to claim her lips, pressing hot skin against each other as they lick into each other's mouths. Running one hand up-and-down her spine, the other thumbing at the crook of her jaw, he feels like he could take her into his mouth and never let go. Her arms are tight around him, one hand pushing into his hair and the other a firm brand of sensation right in the middle of his tattoo. Groaning, heaving breaths and bitten off intakes of air, they grind their hips into one another.

"Take me back to yours," Stiles says, tugging at him, gasping as he slips a hand up her shirt to palm impatiently at her breasts. "Fuck. Derek. Fuck. Please. Take me back to yours."

The sound that shudders his whole body is a growling groan, rumbling deep in his chest and so intermingled that he doesn't even know what it is, other than the vibrations that rock their joined bodies.

He bites impatient and agreeing at her lips and her neck. He wants her. She wants him. He wants her.

All other conditions boil away to those single points.

He can have her. She can have him.

His eyes must flash blue at some point, because Stiles is tugging him up an out of the club, out of the dark lit basement where paint glows on her skin like arcane sigils – like flight paths lighting the boundaries of her body for him to follow.

The drive to his loft is a blur; he takes the earbuds out at one point and they kiss frantically at every red light, hands pushing at skin and digging in fingers. At one point they miss a green light entirely until a car horn sounds from behind them and they spring apart, Derek gunning the engine with a wild vengeance. When he stops the jeep outside his building, his hands move straight from gearstick and wheel to the curves of her body, mouth on hers again. She's hot on his skin, mouth a brand. Moving eagerly against him, Stiles is pliant and demanding in her usual contradictions of self and he groans deep in his throat when her fingernails dig into his skin and pull furrows.

"Loft. Please," Stiles gasps into his throat when he works two fingers into the front of her shorts, just brushing over the fabric of her panties. She's hot and damp. Satisfaction purrs in his body behind the lust, and he nods fervent assent onto the skin of her neck where she has it thrown back, arching her body in a swan's neck curve.

It's a stumble to get out of the jeep – to lock it behind him – when Stiles is there, and together they stumble up the dim lit stairwell to his loft. His eyes shift instinctively to help himself see, and they stop at multiple points, pushing each other into corners to bite at lips and run hands over skin and up clothes. Derek's lucky enough that he's not wearing a shirt, because he would have lost it by now.

"Come on," He says at one point, dragging himself away from the sin of her body. "Loft. Bed."

Stiles's voice sounds wreaked with lust was she husks out her assent and drags him up the remaining stairs to his loft. The door drags open and they tumble through it, Derek slamming the lock home as he closes it. Immediately, he turns and drags Stiles to him, spinning her around to push her up against the cold metal of the door. He pulls her hips to him as she kicks one leg up and hooks it over his hip, bringing him ever closer. His dick presses into her, held back by the denim of his jeans and shielded from her heat, but the pressure is good. Heat crawls up his spine and his dick twitches at the impatient little noises that Stiles is making.

"I've wanted this, you," He says as he kisses into her mouth, pulls her tank strap off her shoulder to press his lips to the pale skin there, "for so long."

"Yeah?" She breathes, "Same. God. –Oh fuck!" She hisses when he bites a hickey into the hollows of her collarbones. Little whimpering noises jump from her throat as he sucks at the skin there, drawing up the blood to a sweet bruise; her voice hitches with desire and a little pain, and he laves at the mark with his tongue to soothe it.

The wash of her desire clouds the air – it's even better this time without the other scents of strangers and alcohol – and he knows that she's hot and soaking with it. Heat rushes through him at the thought of it. Groaning helplessly, he rolls his hips into her, relishing the friction it creates even as it's not enough. He pushes her closer to the door, the wall a support as he lifts her up to straddle his hips, Stiles's legs instinctively clamp around him to support herself.

"Fuck Derek," A brush of humour is in her voice as she followed with, "That's really hot. Shit. Christ."

Derek makes an acknowledging sound as he ran his hands under her shirt, one supporting her back, fingers spread eagled, and the other palming at her breasts, rolling the soft skin under his palm. Her nipples are peaked, hard nubs under his fingertips, and she gasps – a little intake of air – when he bends his head and mouths at them through her tank.

" _Yes_ ," Stiles says – more of a hissed out noise than anything else. Her hands twined through his hair and pushed down encouragingly. Obligingly, he mouths at one breast, then the other, rolling his tongue over the nipple while his hands knead into them. She's gorgeous.

She's perfect, and he says so, groaning the words out, rumbling them in his chest so she shivers into him.

"Really, Derek? Perfect huh?" There's a smirk in her voice and probably a grin on her face that's all parts pleased and bemused, he can tell. "I don't know what you've been smoking. I mean, like, I know I'm gorgeous. But perfect – nah," She babbling self-deprecating words and the insinuation in her voice rankles at him, because she is gorgeous. Flawed, yes, no one can be that much of a snarky asshole and not be flawed, but she's gorgeous, and she's perfect regardless.

"Stiles," Derek says, leaning back to look her in the eyes, serious and steadily intent. "You're perfect to me. A sarcastic pain sometimes. But perfect. And I like you for it."

"Oh," Stiles blinks at him, soft eyelashes falling and fluttering as she stares. Her lips are parted and there's a high blush of heat on the sharp blades of her cheekbones.

The space between them hums with tension, the silence building until Stiles blinks once more, and then leans in to kiss him again, fervent heat on her lips.

"You're unreal. You know that?" she says as she draws back. One of her hands is cupped to his jaw as she stares at him, heartbeat steady and gaze unwavering, even as it jumped from his mouth to his eyes to his jaw with a look akin to wonder.  
"You're unreal," She says once more for emphasis, before kissing him deep and slow and with _meaning._

She kisses as if she's seen under his heart and is trying to communicate what she knows, as if she's found some holy anointment and her lips are pilgrims with palms held to prayer. Derek sighs into her mouth and kisses back with the same intensity; she is a call to worship and there's nothing he can do but respond.

His arms are getting a little sore, so with an easy shift of weight, he carries her to the bed. She makes a delighted sound as she kisses him, 'Bed. Derek. Yes.' and wriggles playfully in his lap when he's finally able to sit down on the edge of the mattress.

"Do you ever stop moving?" He asks and she cocks her head at him, all challenge and humour.

"Oh? You want me to _stop_ moving Derek?" She replies, punctuating her words with deep rolls of her hips, a maddening movement that she _knows_ is driving him progressively crazy. "Are you," Roll of her hips, his unfettered groan, " _absolutely_ sure of that?"

She's got one corner of her plush bottom lip held between her teeth and her eyes are dark with bedroom sins.

"Fuck. Stiles."

She grins at him, totally unrepentant. "That's the idea."

This is how he and Stiles have always interacted - this give and take between them. Their dialogue is play and antagonism all at once as they try to throw one another off balance enough for a score to be called. It used to be in arguments and a mental tally of snappy comebacks and last words, but it's changed since then. And he loves how confident she's being, but he can't totally leave her feeling like she's bested him. So with one smooth movement, he shifts his weight and changes their position. One moment she's in his lap and the next she's beneath him as both their legs dangle off the edge of the mattress.

There's a hitch of noise that cuts off as he hides his grin in her collarbones and let's his hands lay claim to the vast expanses of her skin. He's got all night with her. There's no rush and he takes his time memorising the curve of her thigh. Fingers stretching luxuriously, he lets his fingertips dig into flesh, feeling the bands of slightly rubbery uv body paint on her legs and the strange contrast of bare skin beside it.

Stiles isn't shy with her hands either, one hand on his bicep guiding his arm to the curve of her ass and her other hand roaming over the ridges of muscle on his side.

"Can I?" He asks, tugging at the edge of her tank, and Stiles nods.

"Yes."

The tank comes off easily enough as Stiles helpfully levers her torso off the bed - the muscles of her stomach contract delightfully as she does so - and he flings the fabric off to the side, forgotten. Pale skin unfolds before him; he takes a moment just to look and breathe. Her small breasts curve out from the flat expanses of muscle and flesh in perfect mounds of soft creamy skin, flecked with dark marks and capped in perfectly rosy peaked nipples. There's a just defined ridge of stomach muscles under his hands as he runs them fervently down her skin.

The slight vulnerability in her eyes, the nervous edge that filters into her scent as he just drinks the sight of her in, disappears as he bends his head to lick into her mouth and his hands roam reverently over her skin. He likes the muscle that he finds there - surprisingly defined and strong - as well as the soft fuzz hair that trails down from her belly button and darkens as it disappears under the band of her shorts.

When he went running that afternoon, he didn't know that he would end up here, but he doesn't regret anything. If all his poking into Stiles's cracks and edges - the strange hidden places of her - end up here with her spread on his bed and her skin under his mouth, then he is more than willing to keep poking and prying. He wants to find all of the zones that make her shiver. He wants to see her come undone because of him: smell the sharp-deep pleasure of her as she comes and then the sleepy-satedness after she's satisfied.

He wants so badly.

"So perfect," He murmurs, bending his head to mouth at the soft curves of her breasts, suckling at one nipple then the other. Stiles gives a pleased sound that hitches to a surprised gasp of pleasure when he sucks a hickey into the skin just below a nipple.

"God Derek."

She gives a full body shudder when he worries the skin between his teeth, and the rushing cloud of desire makes him grin instinctively and he hides his pleased smile in her body.

Her hands are curved into his hair, pushing impatiently into his scalp, and he shivers when her fingernails dip and scratch at the nape of his neck.

Stiles can't distract him that much from the heavy hot line of his cock pressing against the zip of his jeans but she must be reading his mind or something, because one of her hands sweep down the panes of is back and reach down to the waistband of his levis. Her fingers dance tantalisingly over the sensitive dip of his tailbone, tracing teasingly before suddenly and with delicious pressure move down under him to rub him through his jeans.

His ensuing groan must please her, because she smiles with her head thrown back and gives a breathless laugh.

From there it moves sudden and swift; zips are fumbled open and hands pushed down clothing. They're moving against each other and panting heavy hot breaths, Derek into Stiles's neck and Stiles into his shoulder. Electric with sensation, Stiles is shivering and jerking under him every time he moves his fingers against her clit but he can't say he's in any better a state. He's pressing impatiently into her hands, hips giving little rolls as she wrapped a firm hand around his cock, clumsily jacking it and rubbing a thumb over the tip every so often. There's not as much pressure as he'd like, rhythm made awkward due to the entrapping layer of cotton and denim.

"These need to come off," Stiles says breathily, plucking at his waistband. "Take these off."

He wants to – god yes he wants to, but the tantalising heat and dampness on his fingers where they're currently pressed against her clit is a much more enticing prospect. He wants to taste her, he wants to bring her off with his mouth and feel her as she comes under his tongue.

"Do you want me to bring you off?" If his voice is a sold rasp, well that's okay, he's more intent on looking at her from under heavily lidded eyelashes. She has a gorgeous flush high on her face and desire parts her swollen lips. Her eyes are dark – full-blown pupils swallowing the amber rings.

She looks entranced as she watches him, nodding slowly at everything he says.

"Do you want me to go down on you? Feel you on my tongue as I lick into you? Huh?"

She's giving little hitching breaths, nodding helplessly at him. Derek punctuates his words with a firm rub of his thumb right on the nub of her clit and a high involuntary cry slips out from her.

"Yes. Fuck. Derek. Yeah."

He kisses her at that, caresses her lips with his own before he's shimmying down the bed, tugging her shorts off as her creamy thighs fall apart to let him in. Reverently, he brushes his lips against damp cotton of her black boy-short panties and inhales the pure scent of Stiles and arousal. It's all sharp salt and sweat, distinctive and heavy. He sweeps his hands up and down the curve of her thighs, takes a moment to look at her and appreciate what _he_ has done to her, to savour what he is going to do to her.

She's supporting herself on her elbows, watching him between her legs with a look of intense enrapture and he likes what her faces does when he slides the boy-shorts off her legs.

Finally, _finally,_ he's able to get his mouth on her; he noses among her dark cropped curls and keeps his eyes locked on her as he traces the sensitive edges of her folds with his fingers. She jerks instinctively the moment he presses his tongue to her clit and laves, her eyes widen and she gasps. One hand scrabbles to collect the sheet in a grounding fist.

He finds what she likes – licking around the edges of pink skin, exploring the nerves that make her shiver best. She makes it easier for him, she's vocal for the things she likes; issuing appreciative noises and tugging one hand in his hair as she gives vocal commands (harder, upwards, yes, not there, yeah there, fuck, yes, circle your tongue a little, please, yes, Derek, fuck Derek). He finds a rhythm quickly, flicking licks against her clit interspersed with hard long sweeps, driving her incoming orgasm on.

He knows when she's close. Her hips start stuttering and twisting involuntarily, the beautiful sounds she makes become louder and more urgent; she's collapsed against the mattress, her hands are scrabbling desperately against the sheets, her face has screwed up, her neck thrown back in a smooth curve as she babbles his name in unbroken overlapping streams.

"Derek Derek, DerekDerek, close-clo-clos-Derek-fuckcloseDerek, pleasepleaseDerek -close."

He tongues her faster and harder, and then with a wail she's coming, shuddering-juddering helplessly on the mattress. He has to hold her down with one arm as he coaxes her through, flickering licks slowing to drawn-out sweeps as she comes down after one beautiful long moment. She twitches away, twisting her hips, gorgeously responsively sensitive.

She's still shuddering as he runs a grounding hand over her body- sides to hips to flanks. He watches her, eyes locked on the long length of her body and completely entranced.

"C'm 'ere," She rasps out after a long moment, groping for him with a clumsy orgasm-dumb hand to pull him up for a kiss. He's acutely aware of her slick shining wet and scent-heavy on his chin, but she doesn't care and kisses him with appreciative lips and a lazy tongue.

"Fuckin' 'mazing," She tells him when they break apart, and he can't help the smug pleased smile that overtakes his face.

" _Good."_

He pulls her close to him, rocking his hips into her just slightly to take the edge off, and they kiss lazily for long moments, their spit slick tongues twining and pushing into each other's mouths like they were trying to breathe with each other's lungs.

She's so fucking beautiful.

He moves his lips down her throat, sucks a deep purpling bruise there and brushes his thumb over some others.

"Have you ever done anything like this before?" He asks, compelled for the truth and she shrugs, shifting to look down at him.

"Yes- and no. I've fooled before at lacrosse after-parties. Hasn't gotten further than hand jobs, fingers, and sloppy make outs. I watch a lot of porn," She laughs; the corners of lips curl up in a self-deprecating smile and he smiles with her. "But I'm a virgin."

Some of that old niggling doubt comes back to him, caution in the aftermath.

"We can leave it with just you," he offers and then continues as she cocks her head with an inquiring 'hmm?'

"Sex. We don't have to do it. If it's your first. It should be –"

He fumbles with the words, and ducks his head as he feels heat pinch the tips of his ears.

"What? It should be roses and candles and Barry Manilow?" Stiles asks, there's a teasing prod at the edge of her voice. "Nuh uh, we're having sex tonight."

"-It's just if you're not ready."

She laughs again, not at him, just happy and amused. "I watch a lot of good porn, Derek. I've wanted to, been ready to have sex since before – oh god, I don't know, since just after I turned seventeen. I just hadn't found anyone I wanted to do it with. There's no way that it isn't happening tonight." Then she turns bright flaming red and goes, "Unless you don't want to, or something, I mean if you're asking because _you_ don't want to-"

"Stiles," Derek interrupts, "I want to. I really want to."

"Oh. Good," She ducks her head again, the blush having taken over her whole face. "I'm going bright red aren't I? Yes. Yes. I am. That probably looks super attractive right now."

"No," He shakes his head, "you're beautiful."

The obvious sincerity in his voice must shock her or embarrass her or something because she stills and goes even redder.

Derek pulls her close to him, "So yes. We are having sex tonight."  
And then he kisses her because she's right there and he _can_. Together they melt into the bed and tangle their limbs up. From there, things pretty much progress in a bone meltingly hot kind of way.

Her hands are a still a little clumsy, and she makes grumpy noises at him when she tugs at his jeans.

"Why are these still on? No seriously. There's so much naked inequality going on here, like what the fuck."

Her voice is three parts laughter and one part snark, and it's all part beautiful. Her laughter is enough to distil the awkward moment when he attempts to pull his jeans off while still holding her. It's not like with Jennifer or Braeden where it was all intensity and tension undercut by a slightly formulaic seduction and the knowledge that an unfortunate bodily noise is going to kill the moment like nothing else. A noise like that here and Stiles is probably going to laugh, make a joke, and move on. He likes that. He likes that a lot.

His underwear quickly follows his jeans, and he's man enough to say that he makes a noise of relief when his cock springs free. It's been in varying states of hard for the past two hours and his jeans have been more abusive than he deserves.

"God you're big," Stiles says. One hand moves tentatively over his hip, hovering just the red flushed length. Her fingers skate over it, sending it jumping at the barely there contact.

He has to fight the urge to thrust up in the air and he's shaping his mouth around the words to say something like 'you want to touch it?' and perhaps also 'you want me to show you how?' when she bites her lip firmly and takes him in hand.

 _Oh god, yes._

"You can firm your grip," He tells her, before biting back on the words. But she grins up at him, quick flash of smile, and does as he says. The pressure is all parts relief and yet not enough.

She's just playing with him, sliding the foreskin back with her thumb, rubbing her thumb over the tip and through the sheen of pre-come. She brings her mouth up to taste it. his breath hitches at the sight; the pink tip of her tongue slipping out. Her breath is moist and hot, her tongue is moist and hot- all torture and tantalisation.

She freezes just before she gets her mouth around him and he almost wants to groan.  
"You're clean right?" she asks him, mouth somewhere near his belly button as he kneels before her on the bed, heels to bare ass. "Otherwise we're going to have to do something about it."

Well. Safety was safety. God knows they'd seen enough shit that it would be irony that a STD would get to them.

"I'm clean," He assures her. "Werewolf immunity deals with that kind of shit."

"Good," And then she's slipping her mouth around him, warm and wet, and so good he's fumbling forward to place one hand on her shoulder, the other fisted down on the rumpled sheets.

She's inexperienced and it shows – but that's okay because this is _Stiles_ mouthing eagerly at him, all saliva and tongue and sweet, _sweet_. She knows enough to avoid teeth, for which he's grateful, and she concentrates on the tip, running her tongue around the flared edge of the head and over the slit. He's too long, too big – her hand can just fit all around him in a loose circle, fingertip and thumb just shy of touching – so she can't get him in too deep, but she fits her hand around him tightly and slicks it up and down with the movements of her mouth when she begins to properly bob her head up and down. He can't help the deep groan that rumbles deep in his throat when she takes him in particularly tight and deep. She speeds up a little, hollowing cheeks and trying to add little inexpert twists of her hands and purrs of her mouth, sending mounting waves of pleasure rocking through him.

She looks beautiful like this, eyes fluttering open-and-shut as she focuses, intent, on what she's doing.

He's close, he can feel it. His hips are giving little minute shudders, aborted jerks of face-fucking movement. He can come – he's so close. He could come now and taste himself on her mouth, thumb the dribble of semen from the corner of her lips.

He doesn't want to come yet. Not yet. With a firm hand, he pulls her off him, pulls her up towards him, bodies flush against each other, his cock pressed close to her skin.

Her mouth tastes like he thought it would, like the musk and heat of him and as he kisses her, he twines one hand between her legs, presses against her clit and slips in to the gushing wetness of her core. She shudders against him, presses closer and bites a swear on her breath.

"Fuck. Derek."

"Do you want to?" There's no question of his intent as he presses his thumb against her clit and brushes against it. The gush of wetness against his fingers and the heady cloud of her lust is gratifying.

"Yes. Fuck, please, please can we fuck now?"

"I need to grab – a condom," He says.

"No need," She gasps into his skin, "I'm on the pill. Hate periods. And you're clean."

Adderall chemicals are a constant in her blood and fuck with his nose so he can't tell if she's on anything else – not like Lydia who smells of it under her perfume.

But the thought of entering her, skin to skin, makes him groan again, deep in his chest.

"Fuck," And then because the word felt good, "fuck Stiles."

She presses closer to him, hitches a leg over his hip, and pulls him tight. Her skin is hot and soft and hard against him, breasts pressed close. His dick jumps and shivers, he can feel the tip press soft-hard-insistent against her wet lips. It would take but a movement to sink up into her, push in and leave her shaking on him, him shaking in her.

He pushes her down and back, so she's up against the pillows. She keeps her hips close to him – her eyes are dark, dark, deep scotch-whisky ringing ink black pupils.

"Go easy," She warns. "I've never-"

"I will. I got you."

Then he's pressing slowly into her, cock breaching the ring of muscle, slow, slow.

"Tell me if something hurts," He chokes out through the burning sensation of _hot, tight, good, so good_.

She breathes in, then out, slow and measured, hitching slightly until he's fully seated in her, her legs tight up around his waist and him bent double to her, lips clasped in a bruising kiss to her neck.

He can't help but give little rolling shifts of his hips, burying his forehead against her skin and Stiles hisses swears under her breath, clutching him to her.

"Tell me I can move," His voice is more of a groan –and it's almost surprising how wreaked his voice his.

"Fuck, please."

So he does, undulating his hips slowly, rocking his body into hers. He can feel the dull pang of slight pain on her though, where her body is working to acclimatise to him. He lets black worming veins draw up his hands where he touches her. It's hard to pain-drain her – concentration all but shot to shit by the heat and beautiful stretch of her torso, but her body relaxes abruptly, pupils swallowing iris as suddenly pleasure comes to the forefront.

"Oh fuck!" She gasps, nails digging into his back as he speeds up, hips rolling steady and strong and sure, pleasure breaking like waves on his skin.

He squirms one hand between them; knuckles down against her clit and she whimpers, a little kitten mewl of involuntary sound. He does it again, and she makes the same sound, stronger and more desperate, clenching around him tight, _so tight,_ as he drives her onwards. She's grabbing at him, hands hard and insistent on his back on his shoulders,

She's shuddering, quaking; her hands slip off his sweat slick skin – she's dug her nails and now when they slip, they rake red lines. He can feel the sting as his skin breaks, salt burning, and then the relief as he heals again. Amid it all, the slick slapping sound of skin is almost obscene, Stiles is making little gasps of air every time he thrusts; _ah- ah-ah!,_ gaining speed and hitching with wails of pleasure. He's holding her close to him, practically hauling her off the bed, one arm under her waist and his other arm is down on the mattress by her head, support his weight.

"You're perfect. Fuck. So perfect like this," He thinks he says the words, throaty and low – wreaked voice piling behind lips between mindless sucks of her skin.

Stiles is begging him, so lost to pleasure that she mustn't realise how fucking sexy she sounds, voice hitching and breaking and whimpering. "Fuck Der- wanna come – I wanna come – make me come, Der, Derek. Plea- _Please!"_

He presses down on her clit once more, thumb fast and firm on that hot little nub, and then she's coming. Stars explode behind his eyes as she grips around him so tight and so hot, her body quakes under him; she rakes her nails across his back with a cry of his name and suddenly, he's coming too. His thrusts turn into desperate jack-rabbit movements, he comes with a locked gasp and white-noise pleasure overtakes his body as he collapses on top of her. He floats on it, grounded only by Stiles's shivering aftershocks and a lax hand wrapped around his wrist.

When he comes to, they're panting into each other's skin and he gathers loose muscles to slip out of her and roll to her side, both of them still trembling. He pulls her close to him, pressing kisses to the pale skin of her shoulder and murmuring words that are half swear half sweet. She twines her hand in his, presses her lips to the soft underside of his wrist in a kiss.

"So good. So good Derek," She says and he hides a weary blissed out smile in her skin.

They fall asleep like that and the morning sun, slanting in through his loft windows, brings them to a languid wakefulness. The yellow light catches in Stiles's eyelashes, and she turns up to him with a lazy smile.

"Hey."

"Hey," He replies, ducking his head down to suck another hickey onto the daisy chain of bruises on her neck. "You want breakfast?"

"mmm," Stiles practically purrs under his hands, "that sounds awesome."

"Go have a shower," he tells her, sweeping a palm up and down her body, thumbing her nipples when his hand passes over her breasts, "I'll make it."

She smiles up at him, beatific and lazy. "Okay."

It's part curiosity and part vanity that makes him check himself out in the mirror as he passes it. He looks well fucked out; his hair is a mess, scraps of paint and glitter are still littered on his skin. When he turns, he can see the breaks of paint on his back where Stiles's nails broke through it. In the background, he can hear the noise of the shower turning on so he goes and makes breakfast.

It's just bacon slices – the good round bits without the fat – with buttery toast and strawberry jelly, but it's all he's got in the fridge besides juice, beef jerky, steak, and pre-mix slaw. He's just pulling the last bacon sides out of the pan when he hears Stiles pad into the kitchen.

"God, that smells so good," She groans as she collapses onto one of the high counter chairs. She sprawls herself over the counter top and groans again for dramatic effect.

He can't help the reflexive smile that breaks on his face as he turns around to greet her. In the morning light, she's stunning. Her dark hair is tousled and damp, hickeys on her neck, and she's wearing one of his shirts. The swoop of possession when he sees that is like a punch to the gut.

"Here," He says, sliding her a plate and a knife and fork. She shoots him a quick, grateful look, before grabbing at the food.

"Oh bacon, get in me," She eats two bacon pieces in the space of twenty seconds and is chewing through a third as she says, "Sex makes you hungry. Who knew?"

He snorts through his own mouthful of food, which he's consuming at a much more sedate pace than Stiles's semi-starved swallows.

It's only when all the bacon is gone and only half a piece of toast is left that she slows down.

He's been watching her between swallows, and now she catches his eye and says quietly, "I had really fun time last night."

"Yeah?" He swallows a too large mouthful of toast, and it scrapes roughly down his throat. He's nervous now for some reason, a flutter of apprehension and perhaps anticipation. "Don't regret it?"

She smiles at him, a curl of her lips, broad and genuine. "No." and then, "Never."

There's a thought playing close behind her eyes, touching up on the tip of her lips. He wants to know what it is. He wants to kiss her, to pull her close – isn't sure if he's allowed outside of mussed sheets and lazy fucked-out sunlight.

He pulls the courage up from somewhere, "So what are you thinking?"

She avoids his gaze, plays with her fork, before looking up at him from cautiously lowered eyelashes. "Was this only a onetime thing?"

Wild hope and wilder courage swells thick in his throat, and somehow he manages to choke out, "I don't want it to be a onetime thing."

The smile blossoms on her face at that, wide and wild, like the pulse beating high in his chest that matches hers.

"So we're dating, right? Because I like you a whole lot more than a casual thing," the words trip off her hands, and her cheeks go flaming red as she realises how silly she must sound. And she does sound a little stupid – earnest and cautious all at once. But it's Stiles and for some reason he loves that she needs that little bit of clarification.

"I like you a whole lot more than the casual thing too." The depth of his feelings must be apparent, painfully and obviously so, but Stiles only sighs in relief.

"Oh. Good," She smiles up at him, broad and gorgeously happy.

Then because he can, and because he doesn't need the excuse of drinking or nightclubs, he leans over the counter and slides one hand around her jaw to tip her into a deep kiss. She sighs into him, twines her hands into his, and makes an appreciative noise. When he pulls back, he traces over the light caught on the panes of her face and wonders if his curiosity has finally led him to a good thing.

He thinks so.

 _Finis._

* * *

 _Well holy shit, I never thought it would become this, this is the longest fic i've written that hasn't even taken more than 6months to complete._ It was going to be a very loose 5+1 things fic, but it turned out to be a miniature monster 50% comprised of shit I couldn't write on the bus like I usually do. (at the back, with no-one around. It feels weird writing smut in public places. I feel like the porn police are watching)

Anyway, I love Fem!Stiles fics, but its hard finding some where she(he) don't become this sort of joke of a character used for easy smut points with minimal character believability.. (oh, well. Pot/Kettle. oops)

So thanks for reading, let me know what you liked or didn't like, reviews always make my day, and if you want author's notes - hmu.

Humbuggy.


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